Leshin Joseph, Carter Maleah J, Doyle Cameron M, Lindquist Kristen A
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States.
Biomedical Research Imaging Center, School of Medicine, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States.
Front Psychol. 2024 Feb 15;14:1084059. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1084059. eCollection 2023.
It is often assumed that the ability to recognize the emotions of others is reflexive and automatic, driven only by observable facial muscle configurations. However, research suggests that accumulated emotion concept knowledge shapes the way people perceive the emotional meaning of others' facial muscle movements. Cultural upbringing can shape an individual's concept knowledge, such as expectations about which facial muscle configurations convey anger, disgust, or sadness. Additionally, growing evidence suggests that access to emotion category words, such as "anger," facilitates access to such emotion concept knowledge and in turn facilitates emotion perception.
To investigate the impact of cultural influence and emotion concept accessibility on emotion perception, participants from two cultural groups (Chinese and White Americans) completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning session to assess functional connectivity between brain regions during emotion perception. Across four blocks, participants were primed with either English emotion category words ("anger," "disgust") or control text (XXXXXX) before viewing images of White American actors posing facial muscle configurations that are stereotypical of anger and disgust in the United States.
We found that when primed with "disgust" versus control text prior to seeing disgusted facial expressions, Chinese participants showed a significant decrease in functional connectivity between a region associated with semantic retrieval (the inferior frontal gyrus) and regions associated with semantic processing, visual perception, and social cognition. Priming the word "anger" did not impact functional connectivity for Chinese participants relative to control text, and priming neither "disgust" nor "anger" impacted functional connectivity for White American participants.
These findings provide preliminary evidence that emotion concept accessibility differentially impacts perception based on participants' cultural background.
人们通常认为，识别他人情绪的能力是自发且自动的，仅由可观察到的面部肌肉形态驱动。然而，研究表明，积累的情绪概念知识会塑造人们感知他人面部肌肉运动的情感意义的方式。文化教养可以塑造个体的概念知识，比如关于哪些面部肌肉形态传达愤怒、厌恶或悲伤的预期。此外，越来越多的证据表明，接触诸如“愤怒”这样的情绪类别词汇，有助于获取此类情绪概念知识，进而促进情绪感知。
为了研究文化影响和情绪概念可及性对情绪感知的影响，来自两个文化群体（中国和美国白人）的参与者完成了一次功能磁共振成像扫描，以评估情绪感知过程中大脑区域之间的功能连接。在四个组块中，参与者在观看美国白人演员摆出在美国被视为愤怒和厌恶典型的面部肌肉形态的图像之前，先用英语情绪类别词汇（“愤怒”、“厌恶”）或对照文本（XXXXXX）进行启动。
我们发现，在看到厌恶的面部表情之前，用“厌恶”而非对照文本进行启动时，中国参与者在与语义检索相关的区域（额下回）和与语义处理、视觉感知及社会认知相关的区域之间的功能连接显著降低。相对于对照文本，用“愤怒”这个词启动对中国参与者的功能连接没有影响，并且用“厌恶”或“愤怒”启动对美国白人参与者的功能连接均无影响。
这些发现提供了初步证据，表明情绪概念可及性根据参与者的文化背景对感知有不同影响。
